


Reality Can Kiss My Ass

by razboinicul_iernii



Category: Captain America (Movies), Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: -in an extremely michael scott voice-, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, I Am Dead Inside, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-29 00:14:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14460900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/razboinicul_iernii/pseuds/razboinicul_iernii
Summary: He was being condescended to by a talking raccoon. Who wouldn't be embarrassed by that?





	Reality Can Kiss My Ass

**Author's Note:**

> AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

It was probably a mistake to try to sleep, really. He woke just the way he thought he would, startled into consciousness by the sound of Bucky calling his name. That image may as well have been burned into his retinas and he almost wanted to laugh because before, it'd been his friend hanging precariously from the edge of a speeding train. Plummeting back to the earth. All it'd taken to erase that image was a newer, fresher death. Because why not? Why shouldn't he watch Bucky die over and over? Part of him didn't even want to bother trying to undo this because God only knew what further horror was in store for his friend should he somehow be brought back. Would he be hacked to pieces? Eaten alive? Dissolved in acid?  
  
He stared out into the darkness of the room and tried to think of nothing. He failed, of course, because that was what he was best at. But he couldn't close his eyes because there was Bucky, confusion in his face as he staggered towards Steve on legs that were crumbling to dust. Reaching out with fingers disappearing into the slightest breeze. Calling out to Steve to fix this, or at the very least, to help him understand why.  
  
But he didn't have an answer.  
  
Angrily, he shoved himself out of the bed and padded through the dark corridors of the unfamiliar building. It was T'Challa's home. He was gone now too. Shuri had asked them to stay, to help fill the emptiness where her brother and mother should be. So Steve obliged, even if he wanted to curl up under the ferns and palms, watching the earth, willing it to spit out what it'd so greedily taken.  
  
Which was stupid of course but he should know by now the brain came up with plenty of stupid things when you'd just watched a person you loved turn to dust in front of you.  
  
A noise made him pause and he was clinging to it, begging it to be a problem, one of those creatures(half of which had also disappeared, apparently), one of Thanos' generals back for blood, something, anything to distract him. Anything for him to pour himself into other than his thoughts.  
  
But he reached the room at the end of the hall and only found Rocket, grumbling under his breath. And Bucky's gun disassembled on the table in front of him.  
  
"What are you doing with that?" Steve snapped. He hadn't meant to. It wasn't like Bucky needed the fucking thing anymore. But of course his stupid, grieving brain was doing what grieving brains do best and attaching significance to things that ultimately didn't matter. The gun was just a thing and a useless thing now. Bucky could've used any weapon in that fight. Could've picked up any gun.   
  
But he'd used _this_ one. It was the last thing he'd held before dying. And Steve didn't want it being disturbed. Didn't want someone else laying claims to it.  
  
The raccoon jerked suddenly, looking over his shoulder, little paw going for a different weapon at his hip. He relaxed when he laid eyes on Steve. "Word of advice, pal. Don't sneak up on me in the middle of the freaking night after a war."  
  
Steve hadn't intended to sneak. His feet were bare and his footsteps were light because he didn't want to wake anyone who'd somehow managed to get to sleep. "Fair enough," Steve answered, moving to the other side of the table. He looked over the surface, mostly covered by parts of the gun and a cleaning kit. But to the right, a bit further away, was a shallow bowl filled with dirt and ashes and leaves. His breath caught in his throat.  
  
It must've caught Rocket's attention because he asked, "Who was it for you?"  
  
He returned his eyes to the raccoon, who was looking up at him. "A lot of people."  
  
Rocket snorted. "Yeah, half the freaking universe disappears, I guess you'd be missing a lot of people." He scrubbed the inside of the barrel and it almost seemed like a furious gesture. "Me, I don't even know who I lost yet, that's the worst of it. Don't know where my friends are. If they got pulverized by that giant purple douchebag or if they disappeared or what." His relentless scrubbing suddenly stopped, and he grabbed the bowl carefully, dragging it towards him. He held it up to Steve, so that he could see it better. Only now did he notice that two acorns and a small, curved twig were arranged to look like a smiling face. "This is Groot. All that's left of him, once I could gather him up."  
  
Steve remembered briefly meeting Groot on the battlefield. Thor had called him Tree. He looked at the ash and dirt, remembered kneeling on the ground where Bucky had disappeared, the earth warm where most of his ashes had fallen. He shouldn't know what a person felt like in his fingers when they'd been reduced to dust. He shouldn't know what it looked like to watch it happen. And he wondered, because of course his mind wouldn't give him one peaceful second, what it felt like. What was it like for Bucky in those last few seconds? Had it hurt? For how long could he feel it coming? Had he panicked inside, or was it so sudden his mind couldn't register it? Was he in shock when he called Steve's name or was it just a reflex?  
  
Tears stung his eyes and he looked down to his lap. He wasn't going to cry in front of a talking raccoon. "I didn't bring him back," Steve said.  
  
Rocket was quiet, like he was waiting for Steve to say more.Then he shrugged. "Cause you ain't selfish, like me. Groot's coming with me whether he likes it or not."  
  
Steve managed a small laugh. It wasn't all that heartfelt. Maybe even automatic. "At the time there were just so many people...gone. I couldn't think straight. Didn't think to gather any of their...remains. And some of them, I had no way of knowing where they even were." Sam had disappeared and some small part of Steve hoped he'd been in the air when it happened to him. He should get to keep flying. And Wanda, was she with Vision now? Steve refused to entertain the notion that the latter didn't have a soul, so he could hope they at least found one another, somewhere.  
  
"Yeah, it's like a final fuck you, ain't it? Purple bastard couldn't even kill 'em in a way that left us their bodies to bury," the raccoon griped. Steve heard something slide back into place in the gun as Rocket's nimble fingers worked. "But he'll get his. Oh yeah, just you wait."  
  
Steve couldn't begin to see how that was possible. Thanos had complete control over every aspect of the universe. Of life itself. What hope did they have of finding him, let alone taking back the gauntlet and undoing what he'd done? Humanity hadn't even made it to Mars. They weren't finding an omnipotent alien in the depths of space who didn't want to be found.  
  
"I'm cleaning it, by the way," Rocket said gruffly. Steve had forgotten he'd even asked, and the answer had become obvious once he sat down and looked. "It's a nice gun. A bit old school, but nice. Gonna keep it that way."  
  
"That's kind of you," Steve managed. He'd picked up the gun before heading back to the city. His hands had been shaking then and the weight of it seemed near impossible to carry. "His name was Bucky." Speaking of him in the past tense wasn't difficult. He'd been doing it for years.  
  
"Yeah? You knew him?" Rocket asked.  
  
Steve nodded. Didn't know how much he should say to a raccoon from space but what was the point in holding anything back now. "Yeah. I...I loved him."  
  
Rocket's ears drooped slightly and he slowed in his work but didn't stop. "That bites." The sound of the wiry brush scraping against metal filled the moonlit silence of the room for a moment. Steve tried to think of nothing. Tried not to think of how it'd taken Bucky being put into perilous situations over and over before Steve could admit these things to himself. How it took Bucky coming back from the dead for Steve to admit any of it to Bucky's face. How Bucky had watched him carefully when he said it, waiting for the punchline, the trick, something to show it wasn't real because he refused to believe that after all he'd done he was worth that much to anyone.  
  
And why had he waited? Why had Steve waited so long to admit it? In retrospect, their arguments back in the forties seemed so trivial. Steve had been so angry then, that Bucky got to go off and fight and Steve didn't. Bucky had been angry that Steve wanted to. Angry at himself because he _hadn't_ wanted to. Then things only became more complicated when Steve met Peggy and he'd loved her so of course it meant he had to see her die too.  
  
It seemed like he and Bucky had shared so little time together, now. He'd hesitated for too long. Kept waiting for the right moment when he should've known by now that he could lose his chance at any time. "Didn't even get to say goodbye," he realized suddenly and why should that hurt so much?  
  
Rocket set down his tools and started polishing the metal instead. "None of us did and it sucks ass."  
  
Steve knew he wasn't the only one suffering. A more selfish part of him didn't care. Wanted to only focus on his own loss. But he couldn't so he said, "I'm sorry. About you and Groot."  
  
Rocket shrugged like it was inconsequential. "Kind of happened once before."  
  
Steve laughed a small laugh again because what were the chances? "Yeah. Me too."  
  
Rocket looked up at that. "You people grow back?" His expression of confusion was so pure it almost reminded Steve of Bucky and he smiled.  
  
"No...I mean, I thought he was dead. And it turned out he wasn't."  
  
At that Rocket settled back in his seat and kept polishing the gun. "Makes more sense. See with Groot, he was blown to pieces and...I wasn't sure if he was gonna ever come back. But I got a little pot and some soil, and I planted a piece of him anyway. And he came back." He blew out a breath and shrugged his shoulders. "So I'm keeping him again, just in case." He nodded to Steve. "Keeping Bucky's gun clean too. Just in case."  
  
Steve couldn't help but stare, the numbness in his chest taking precedence over everything. It was like a vacuum, sucking away any and every thought he could possibly have. "I don't think he's coming back," Steve said finally, allowing himself to be impressed by the way his voice didn't crack or falter.  
  
Rocket didn't look up as he spoke, apparently focused on his work. "You don't know that," he answered with a shrug. It should've been surreal, not just watching a raccoon speak but seeing it adopt such human gestures and mannerisms but Steve was through with being surprised by anything. An alien had just committed the largest genocide in the history of the universe with a glove and some rocks. Who was he to be shocked by anything anymore? "These things always start off hopeless but..." Rocket paused in his cleaning, sad eyes wandering over the little pile of ash and leaves in the bowl. Then he furrowed his brow and continued, "But we figure them out."  
  
He simply couldn't see it happening. "Wish I could have that kind of optimism," he mumbled instead.  
  
"What's stopping you?" Rocket asked. He flipped the gun over onto its other side and started cleaning again.  
  
Steve looked at Rocket like he was an idiot, unable to keep his face passive. "Reality, I guess."  
  
Rocket laughed obnoxiously, mouth falling open to expose sharp little teeth. "Reality? Why do you give a shit about that? A guy comes through a portal and snaps his fingers to obliterate half the universe's population, and you're sitting here whining about _reality?"_ He laughed a little more and Steve felt his cheeks heating up. He was being condescended to by a talking raccoon. Who wouldn't be embarrassed by that? "Listen, pal. I'm only gonna say this once so take it in or forget it, I don't care. Sittin' around here feeling sorry for ourselves isn't gonna bring anybody back, and it isn't doing their memories any good either. So you can waste your time doing that and worrying about _reality_ -" He paused, capping the polish and throwing down the rag he'd been using. He picked up Bucky's gun and jumped down out of his chair before marching over to Steve, paws pattering noisily against the wood floor. "Or, you can get up off your ass and do what needs doing to bring 'em back, no matter how hopeless it seems. You start off small. You keep 'em with you, however you can. You keep their shit ready for 'em for when they get back. Work at it little by little. And before you know it, you're beating in the face of every alien jackass who thought it was his damn right to kill 'em in the first place."  
  
Steve watched Rocket as he spoke, and his eyes weren't just angry. Because anger fades. Anger doesn't get you where you need to go. He was furious, yeah, but behind that fury was determination. The kind Steve had. Or maybe used to have, before so much had gone wrong. But if he'd had it before, he could have it again. Floundering here, purposeless and defeated, would help no one, just like Rocket said.  
  
"So? What're you gonna do?" Rocket demanded. "You gonna sit there and do nothing, or you gonna tell reality it can kiss your ass?"  
  
Steve leaned down, reaching for Bucky's gun. It still seemed so heavy, just as it had when he first picked it up off the battlefield. It was the last thing Bucky had touched. But that was not why it was significant. That's not why he had to keep it safe. And that's not why he was going to hide it away like a secret. Bucky was going to need it when he got back.

 

**Author's Note:**

> aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh


End file.
